


Under the Knife

by sadietheauthor



Category: Uglies Series - Scott Westerfeld
Genre: Gen, My First Work in This Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 05:31:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3598197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadietheauthor/pseuds/sadietheauthor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After all, I've always been a Special Circumstance</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under the Knife

**Author's Note:**

> I really like this series but i've never written anything for it! I still really love Tally, she's my all time fave, so i thought i'd write something a little angsty for her to honor what an awesome character she is

She was still sixteen when she went under the knife for the final time, kicking and screaming as the anesthesia took hold.  
The first time, the doctors sawed down her bones, filed her teeth, stretched and pulled and re-sewed her skin. Cut the fat, cut the nose, widen the eyes. Wide hips, gentle bust, small waist.  
They ground her down to a powder, and then they built her back up stronger, softer, and sleeker. Ceramic and plastic, a thin veneer of organic matter concealing the lab-grown frame until all that was left of her was her brain. Then they took that too.  
Her synapses were torn away, memories scraped away, the entirety re-wired until she was compliant like a pretty porcelain doll, with the bright glassy eyes, soft shiny hair, smooth pale skin. They cut all pain, anger, guilt, and responsibility from her until all that remained was a shell with blank spaces where memories should go, vapid ness where there had once been clarity.  
The second time they cut more, deeper, sharper. They electrified her brain until it could see every tree, every flower, and every tiny bug on every tiny leaf within the next mile. The ceramic was hardened, the plastic more flexible. They thinned the hips, the bust, made the eyes sharper, grayer. They hardened her from her heart and mind all the way down to her fingernails. Her teeth were razors, and her entire body was a weapon. They cut and sewed and molded until she was more scar and surgery than human, even inside her own head. They made her a little soldier that would always follow their orders, even if it meant killing the one she held dearest to her heart. She night even enjoy it if given the chance.  
There remained only the littlest hint of her own face, hidden in the structure, the last bit of bone that hadn’t been tossed into a medical waste bin, replaced with silicon and microchips. She was taller, thinner. Prettier. Then she was Special.  
But there was something deep down that they could not cut away, could not replace with lies and plastic. It ran deep through her like flame, farther than knives could reach, more than could ever be ripped away. But the doctors don’t like will, don’t like the power of it. So they extinguished it all.  
She died on that table, restrained and drugged, reconfigured into someone else’s idea of perfect.  
Yes, the old Tally Youngblood died. But from that death I rose, until my perfect weapon of a body could strike back at them for what they’d done to me.  
When I awoke, and breathed in for the first time with my new nose, into my new lungs, deep down, that flame burned bright again, and I knew that Tally could never truly disappear from this world.  
After all, I’ve always been a Special Circumstance.


End file.
